What is the FedEx Cup?
Get confused about what the FedEx Cup is? Don’t worry, NCG has you covered with a run down of what the competition is, how the standings are worked out and how much the winner receives.
What is the FedEx Cup?
The FedEx Cup is a season long competition used by the PGA Tour since 2007. Players gain points in each event they play in on tour and the winner is the player with the most points at the end of the season.
How does the points system works?
Players gain points by playing in PGA tour events throughout the season. The majors carry the most points for a win with 600 points on offer to the winner, the World Golf Championships carry 550 points and regular tour events offer 500 points to the winner.
There are also tournaments that offer 300 points to the winner and these are events that normally coincide with the majors or World Golf Championships.
What are the Play-Offs?
In addition to the normal season schedule there are, from 2019 onward, three play-off events, prior to 2019 there were four play-off events.
Each of these events carry four times the amount of points as a regular tour event with 2000 points on offer to the winner of the play-off events instead of 500.
The play-off events, however, are only available to those in the top 125 of the FedEx Cup points list at the end of the regular season. The first play-off event sees the top 125 battle to try to get into the top 70 to progress to the next stage. Similarly the top 70 who qualified for the second play-off event will battle for the top 30 places to try and make it to the Tour Championship.
Who has won the FedEx Cup?
The FedEx Cup has had 11 different winners since its inception in 2007. Only one player has won it on more than one occasion.
2007: Tiger Woods
2008: Vijay Singh
2009: Tiger Woods
2010: Jim Furyk
2011: Bill Haas
2012: Brandt Snedeker
2013: Henrik Stenson
2014: Billy Hosrchel
2015: Jordan Speith
2016: Rory Mcilroy
2017: Justin Thomas
2018: Justin Rose
How much money does the winner receive?
Players get paid out for finishing in the top 125 positions in the FedEx cup standings. FedEx puts in a current prize money pool of $35 million, this makes it golf’s richest prize.
Here is a breakdown of how much the top receive:
1st $10,000,000
2nd $3,000,000
3rd $2,000,000
4th $1,500,000
5th $1,000,000
Changes to 2019
From next year the Tour Championship, which is the final event of the season, is adopting a new way of approaching how the final event is run. Instead of points being awarded on finishing position, players will adopt a starting stroke number. So 1st in the FedEx cup standings will start on -10, second on -8, third on -7, fourth on -6, fifth on -5 and so on.
On top of these changes, FedEx are also increasing the prize money pool from $35 million dollars to $60 million dollars. This will increase the winners share of the prize from $10 million dollars to $15 million dollars, therefore making golfs richest prize even richer.
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